Living Life As It Is

Last week, at this time, my man and I were in Mount Dora.  So was Tropical Storm Isaac.  That seems to be the theme of the summer, we escape for rest and relaxation and are accompanied by a tropical storm.  It happened in May with Tropical Storm Beryl, in June with Debby and last week with Isaac.  Fortunately, we stayed safe and still had a good time and our home and family, who also were in the path of the three storms, suffered no ill effects of the unpredictable weather.  


Being in Mount Dora, as always, was restorative.  Much rest, walks in the rain or between the rains, lots of reading, some writing, naps, visits with people we have come to know in our favorite town and the pleasure of meeting other residents, and many good meals.  Good times can be had even in threatening weather.  We discovered a book store called Barrel of Books and Games where I purchased some gifts for my grandchildren and several books, including a three-book series of novels that take place in Mount Dora called the Fairlawn Series by Angela Hunt.  Last night, having completed a wonderful novel about people and dogs living near Central Park in Manhattan (another of my favorite places) called “The New Yorkers”, I started the first in the Fairlawn series, “Doesn’t She Look Natural?”  I am enjoying the story very much in spite of the slight “Christian” side-theme, which is present but not preachy.  The story is not unusual: husband has mid-life crisis leaving his wife and two sons for their nanny, who is, of course, a fraction of his age.  Mom is left struggling financially, forced to sell their home and move in with her retired mother, searching for a job in Washington, D.C. while hindered by her powerful husband’s influence there, and trying to remain hopeful about the future as she assumes almost full responsibility for raising their two sons.  I have just reached the part when Mount Dora enters the picture.  Mom inherits, from an barely-known great-uncle, a funeral home in Mount Dora and will end up moving her children there to assume management of a business about which she knows nothing.  I am looking forward to seeing how Mount Dora is portrayed in the book - favorably, I am sure, since the book is sold and promoted in the town!  I like the idea of the unknown business challenge and am interested in seeing how mom and boys adjust to their new lives in Mount Dora, so far-removed and so immensely different than their lifestyle and  experiences in the D.C. area.

My Labor Day weekend plans to finish painting the table and chairs I purchased for my grandchildren back in July were pushed aside when my client, who has closed his business but still needs me to work for him until the end of the year, decided that he does not want to keep his office available as a place for me to work and asked me to transfer his bookkeeping records, computer and printer and some office supplies to my house.  Since my house is overflowing with three adults and two children living here full-time and two other family members staying for weeks at a time several times a year, it was a challenge to make room for more stuff.  But, because he was not only a good client but also a friend, I did my best to accommodate his wishes.  More rearranging, more organizing, but I think I made it work.  Waiting now for my computer-expert friend to come by and tweak what I started, but I am confident we can make the situation satisfactory.  

On Thursday, I leave for a women-only retreat called Expanding Past The Fear at an ocean resort in the Florida Panhandle.  I am excited to be part of this event.  Not only will it involve lots of self-care, but we will work through our fears - fears that may be holding us back from who we should be and what we should be doing.  I believe that we are all a work-in-progress and anything we can do to improve who we are and where we are furthers us on our path to prosperity and personal fulfillment.  I am so grateful for the opportunity to be part of this retreat!

Life continues even when you have a manifestation project.  You cannot stop living, nor should you, to concentrate on what you want to create in the future.  I know people who put their current lives on hold to while away the hours dreaming of what they want the future to hold.  Life is about energy and energy is about action.  Action is in the present, the now.  Work must be done, bills paid, food prepared, lawns mowed, clothes washed, children hugged, school lessons learned, floors swept, bodies showered, books read.  Our actions must naturally revolve around what creates and maintains the life we are living right now, but we also should carve out time for what we want to manifest.  Just a little time.  Some meditation, some visualization every day.  Some journaling is good and for me, blogging.  For whatever it is you want to manifest, set aside a little time everyday, even if no more than fifteen minutes, to keep your dream alive and fresh.  Embrace and participate in the life you have now, even if your desire is to create a new, different life.  Appreciate what you have now to energize what you want in the future.

Living Small

As a child, I thought big and I dreamt even bigger, as most of us do.  But, my thoughts and dreams shrunk in size as I matured.  Life experiences deflated me, people cautioned me, and I succumbed to fear and self-doubt, as most of us do. 

Well-meaning mentors, family members and friends told me "don't bite off more than you can chew", "be practical", "you can't support yourself doing that", "life is hard, plan ahead", "work hard, then work harder" and all those sorts of advice comments we have all heard during our lifetimes. 

Plans I had went awry.  Unexpected problems interferred with my life.  Failures knocked me down.  Doubts crept in.  Fears took hold.  And, I began to think and dream smaller, then even smaller.  I was like a balloon losing air. By my early twenties that balloon was languishing on the ground, mostly deflated. 

I could put blame on others for poor advice and for instilling fears. I could blame life itself for what did not occur that I wanted to happen and what did occur that I did not want to happen or could not even have imagined happening.  And, I did dish out the blame for many years.  But, that did not benefit me in any way.  In fact, the blame game just made me feel bitter and angry and even more defeated.  Why try when I cannot control much, if hardly anything, that happens in my life? 

The biggest lie I was told by all those well-meaning advice-givers was that I could control my life.  I could plan and chart a life course and with diligence follow it precisely to great successes.  Not true - at least for me.  I know some who have appeared to do just that.  They decided at an early age what they wanted to do in life, they went to school or obtained the experience and training they needed, they worked hard or at least diligently in their chosen profession and lived a life that was successful on many levels.  Some may not have done so well in other areas which are not so easily planned.  Some had relationships and family lives that were filled with disappointment and unexpected consequences, but some were fortunate to have personal lives just as or even more successful and fulfilling as their professional ones.  I used to hate those people.  I was filled with jealousy that they walked a clear path with no pitfalls or unexpected detours.  Why did they seem so blessed and I was not?  Of course, if I dared looked honestly at my life, in spite of the unexpected occurrences and roadblocks along the way, my life appeared to be much better than the lives of many who seem to walk with a dark cloud of impending doom over their heads.

Comparing my life to someone else's was a waste of time and emotions.  Now, I see that we are all here for different reasons, to have different experiences and to learn and grow from all the pitfalls, detours and problems that litter our paths.  We can plan and dream (planning and dreaming are good), but unless we are in touch with our inner guidance system, unless we are incorporating what we learn into our daily practices, unless we are being grateful for all the many blessings in our lives (even if it appears others have more blessings), and unless we are open to change and adjustments, we will always seem to be failing and losing our way.  Of course, we aren't.  We are moving forward just as we need to.  We are having experiences to learn just what we need to know.  We feel stuck, we feel lost, we feel defeated, but that is because we are out of touch with who we really are and what we are here to accomplish.  Tap into your inner guidance system or to your higher power or to your intuition and your life will become smoother and clearer.  Too often we learn that lesson later in life and then we feel we missed the boat.  The knowledge and connection came too late.  Now, we have something new to hold us back.  Age.  I am too old, I can't start over now, there isn't enough time left to do what I want to do, I no longer have the energy I need. . .

Thoughts like that are new barriers that we create for ourselves.  I know I often feel that way.  I am too old now.  I wish I had learned all this when I was younger and my life could have been so much more, so much fuller, so much better.  I wish, I wish, I wish.  Wishing is NOT dreaming.  Wishing is a terrible waste of time and energy.  I am working hard to replace wishes with dreams and then taking those dreams to a new level where I actualize them through The Law of Attraction.  And, still, sometimes I feel that it is all moving too slow because I am getting older every day and, really, how much time do I have left?  That is when I try to remember that my great-aunt lived to be 104 and my man's mother will be 93 in a month.  Maybe I have lots of time left and maybe I don't, but I prefer to bet that I do.  Otherwise, I will just sit here passively and decay.  Nope, not appealing at all. 

Once, while I was attending a prosperity class, I had a dream in which myself and another class member were standing before a building with a sign on it that said "The Center for Peace and Prosperity".  I woke up from that dream, remembering it in detail, and knowing, without a doubt, that it was the woman standing with me before that glorious Center for Peace and Prosperity who had created it.  I gave her full credit for the Center although no words were exchanged in my dream; there was no signage indicating she was the founder of the Center; there was absolutely NO REASON for me to believe she was the creator of the Center.  But, that is what I thought.  Why?  Because I could not imagine myself doing something so grand; I could not accept that I was capable of such a glorious creation.  I was thinking small, dreaming small, living small.

I recently had a very similar dream.  I saw a building, although it looked different than the one in my original dream and, in fact, it looked very similar to a building in Mount Dora, and on that building was a sign that said "The Center for Peace and Prosperity".  I stood there alone.  I stood there feeling proud.  When I awoke, I knew that in my dream I was the creator of the The Center for Peace and Prosperity.  Perhaps I was also the creator in my original dream, but I was unable, at that time, to seem myself as a creator or a builder or a manifestor. So, I gave the credit to someone else.

Now I can see myself that way.  Now I can give myself credit for something that I very much dream of manifesting in Mount Dora.  Besides my home, my retirement and my new life in Mount Dora, I can now imagine part of that new life being "The Center for Peace and Prosperity".  Yes, I can see that.  Yes, I can live bigger.  

4/14/12 Manifesting Manhattan and My Man

Like many Southerners, I once viewed mega-cities, such as New York, with distrust and even a little fear.  Although I was born in Baltimore, lived in Atlanta and had family in Chicago, I was raised in the country and felt more comfortable in rural areas or very small cities.  To me New York City seemed unfriendly and unsafe.  My husband disliked crowds, so we avoided cities of any size.

In 1998, my marriage was crumbling.  My husband and I were like roommates who did not like each other very much.  I was depressed, I was cynical, I was lonely.  And, that was the year the movie “You’ve Got Mail” was released. 

Starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, “You’ve Got Mail” was a romantic comedy set in Manhattan.  For me, “romantic” and “Manhattan” meant the movie had two strikes against it.  I attended the movie with my then sister-in-law and her daughter.  Through the show, my face was frozen in disgust.  Who believed this drivel?

Unbelievably, I sat through the movie again with some girlfriends who wanted to see it.  Second time around, I was more annoyed than disgusted, but I was also a little interested, in some strange inexplicable way.  Afterwards, to my surprise, I thought about the movie often.  When the video was released, I bought it and chastised myself for being so silly. 

I watched the video over and over and over again.  I woke up in the middle of the night and went to the living room and watched it.  I could not seem to stop watching it.  Was I going crazy?  Why was I doing this?  Thus began my first manifesting experience, although I was unaware of what I was doing or why I was doing it.  Without knowledge of The Law Attraction, I could not understand my fascination with the movie or comprehend that the movie could actually help me create a new life. 

My bizarre preoccupation with “You’ve Got Mail” lasted for about a year, but even after my obsession subsided, I continued to watch it two or three times a year.  From that movie, grew a very strong desire to visit Manhattan.  I wanted to walk the streets of the Upper West Side.  I wanted to visit Riverside Park.  I wanted to experience the city that once frightened me.  I remained cynical about romance, but I wanted to be wrong; I wanted to believe in love again. 

Little did I know that I was manifesting in the purest way possible.  Long before I knew about the Law of Attraction and before “The Secret” was created, before my daughter entered my life, before I left my husband, I was manifesting Manhattan and my new man-to-be. 

Six years after the release of “You’ve Got Mail”, I met my man.  He differed from Tom Hanks in many ways, but he was romantic and he lived many years in New Jersey, right across the river from Manhattan, a city he visited as often as he could.  He knew the streets of Manhattan well and he also loved the movie “You’ve Got Mail”.  From the first time we watched the movie together, it became “our movie”.  He told me where the movie scenes were located in Manhattan and shared many stories of his times in the city.  My desire to see Manhattan, born from the movie, became a longing, a very strong wanting that was nurtured by his stories.  

Another five years would pass before we were able to go to Manhattan, but I finally walked the streets I’d seen in “You’ve Got Mail” and visited all the city places my man so often told me about.  Since then, we have returned two more times and try to visit there every year now.  I love Manhattan and being there with my man is romantic, fun and exciting. 

I believe, without a doubt, that I manifested my man and Manhattan through my preoccupation with “You’ve Got Mail”.  I cannot explain why my opinion of the movie changed or why I became obsessed with it, but obviously that film was filling some need in my life.  By watching it many times, I attracted a man to love, a man who also loved Manhattan and would later delight in introducing me to his favorite city. 

Right now, we are all manifesting, whether we realize it or not.  We may be manifesting the same sort of experiences that currently fill our lives - perhaps they are good, perhaps not.  We may need a change and, without realizing it, we start creating that change by focusing on something different.  In my case, the “something different” was a movie. 

If we can manifest without knowledge, without conscious effort, imagine what we can do when we put the Law of Attraction to work purposefully!

3/30/12 Daring To Dream

“Daring to dream what is deepest in our collective longings is what makes us most human and fully alive.”   Wendy Wright, The Vigil


My Manifesting Mount Dora Project, during its slightly more than one week of existence, has been a challenge, has spawned creativity and fun, and has made me feel more alive than I’ve felt in a long while.  And, as is the case with many new passions, I have been left exhausted at times, but the good kind of tired, when you feel spent and rest is a reward for your efforts.

The challenges continue and sometimes seem to be racing toward me like Seabiscuit to the finish line.  Again, I feel like I am under attack and sometimes from the very ones that I would expect to shield, comfort and inspire me.  Is my new found passion making others uncomfortable?  Or, are my actions exposing something uncomfortable within themselves?  Am I changing in ways that others don’t appreciate? I don’t know, may never know.  I just keep moving forward.  I look for anything and everything that shines with positivity.  I smile when I feel like shouting or crying or sighing or running far, far away.  And, believe me, that has happened more than a few times this week. 

I had a conversation with a friend the other day who is facing a great change in his life and, although he is an advocate of change and has recreated himself many times, this change  has been forced upon him at a time that feels inconvenient and frightening.  He did not initiate the change and is reluctant to face upheaval at this time in his life.  Oddly, he admits that the very change that is occurring was something he started to initiate, something he wanted, twice during the last decade, but put off because he was feeling so comfortable where he was and with what he had.  The change was, at one time, what he wanted, but he did not follow the calling.  A few years ago, the change he faces now was knocking on his door as opportunity, but he turned it away and now the change has knocked down his door and rattled his windows.  He started the game and became too comfortable, too complacent and decided to sit out an inning and then another and then another.  Now he is being called in to play and he may go out to the field reluctantly or with vigor.  He will choose vigor.  I know him.  For a few days or a couple of weeks he will mourn what he is losing and, in the process, shake off the cobwebs that have gathered.  He knows the game well, he knows he must play creatively with confidence and determination.  He will play and he will win. 

Complacency is merely being comfortable for too long.  We all need a rest.  Sitting on the front porch admiring the fruits of our labors and watching the world parade by is okay - for awhile.  My paternal grandfather, who passed before I was born, worked six days a week, ten or more hours a day from the age of 14 until his retirement at 68 years of age.  He deserved to rest.  He and my grandmother moved to a cabin on a lake and he sat on the porch and did nothing until he died a few years later of what was then called hardening of the arteries.  Maybe his arteries hardened due to a high fat diet or maybe because he stopped moving - not just moving forward, but moving at all.  Not just physical movement, but mental, spiritual and emotional movement, too.  He just stopped.  

Life has stages.  We rush to the next stage or we enter it unwillingly or even unknowingly.  We may try to hold it at bay, but it will come.  We can welcome it, dread it or even deny it, but it will come.  When you enter the next phase of your life, you are swept up in changes - a new school, a new love, a new job, a new home, the birth of a child, the end of a relationship, the loss of financial security, the death of a loved one - they all require attention, energy and focus.  There may be turmoil or excitement or grieving or joy.  Life is electric.  Time passes with unforgiving swiftness.  And then the climate calms.  A pattern develops and we slow dance through our days.  Life is like the soft underbelly of a kitten.  Even the annoyances and aggravations are easily swept away and forgotten.  We get comfortable.  Then, it starts.  The little waves of electricity return, perhaps as problems or maybe as desires.  We feel unsettled, sleep does not come easily.  The kitten awakes and scratches the hand on his soft fur.  We cry, we bleed, we long, we fight, we dream.  But, we want to be comfortable.  We miss the routine, the knowing of life.  So, we look for switches to shut off the electricity.  We’d rather be in the dark like in a mother’s womb.  We push away the dreams and sleep heavily and deeply.  We hold tight and develop a fear of the unknown.  But, the unknown knows us and its coming again.  And again, and again.  Until one day, it does not just knock on the door, it blows the door in.  

For many years I was in the dark, holding tight with fear, when it was the dark that I should have feared.  I made changes that finally turned on the light and moved me in to a new phase of life.  For almost eight years I have been in a new chapter of my life.  For awhile now, I have felt the knocking on the door.  I can open it or I can nail it shut, but the nails will rust and come loose and sooner or later the door will give way.  I have chosen to open the door.  Manifesting Mount Dora is the opening of the door. 

“Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid of standing still.”   Chinese Proverb